


shouldn't be anything like me

by angrylizardjacket (ephemeralstar)



Series: bless the children of the beast {charlotte & lola AU} [13]
Category: The Dirt (2019), The Dirt (2019) Actor RPF
Genre: Article Style Fic, Coping, F/M, Other, Reconnecting with family, on tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29817915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralstar/pseuds/angrylizardjacket
Summary: Tommy & Lola's kid is going on tour.
Relationships: Colson Baker | Machine Gun Kelly/Original Character(s), Nikki Sixx/Original Female Character(s), Past Tommy Lee/Original Female Character(s)
Series: bless the children of the beast {charlotte & lola AU} [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685215
Kudos: 3





	shouldn't be anything like me

**Author's Note:**

> you probably don’t want to read an 11k article fic abt Lola’s kid on tour in the months after the dirt’s release, but if you care about that, or about world building and fake albums...... please read. please read anyways i love this.

##  **_Born With Stars In Their Eyes:_** _on the road with JUPITER, the artist determined to break out of their parents shadow._

_ORIGINALLY PITCHED_ as an exposé on the oft-forgotten origins of one of the biggest names in Post-Pop EDM, following JUPITER on their _Ancient Sins_ tour, just months after the release of the Netflix film about their family, this article has turned to so much more since the announcement of their invitation to join the 2019 EST FEST lineup, with known rival Machine Gun Kelly.

JUPITER today is known best by their single-word moniker, for being both a talented musician, vocalist, and spokesperson for The Trevor Project, an organisation focused on aiding the LGBT+ community, and has been very vocal regarding their own identity as a nonbinary, pansexual individual. In the past, they’ve fronted bands under the name _Lisa Lotte Lee_ , most notably _Childhood Knife Fight,_ and it’s a little know fact that they have been a major sponsor for the professional skater ‘Seo’ for over half a decade, but that’s not where their strange and wonderful story begins.

SITTING OPPOSITE me in a cafe in down-town Miami, JUPITER wears a pastiche of pastel garments, the most notable of which is the mesh, lilac crop-top with a black planet stenciled on the back; it’s a cool, summery look, showing off some of their own branded merchandise, and it compliments their royal purple hair. It’s July, sunny and almost overwhelmingly hot outside of this air-conditioned oasis that they’d picked out for us to meet in.

“What would you like to know?” They’re no nonsense, straight to the point, and at such an open-ended question, I’m at a loss. I want to know everything, I have so many questions but don’t seem to know how to ask any off them as they fix me with a cool, unblinking stare. It’s unnerving. JUPITER orders a hazelnut latte and I finally ask how they got into music.

At this, they already give pause. Our drinks haven’t even arrived yet.

“Well, it’s in my blood,” they say, humorlessly, “everyone and their dog knows my dad is Tommy Lee, the drummer for Motley Crue.” Our drinks are placed in front of us and I must admit to them that I was aware of this. “While I have a background in music, through both of my parents, though you probably wouldn’t be aware of the full story there, I have never used my name or any connections people think I might have, in order to try and,” they pause for a moment, hesitating, “[sic] make myself more famous, I guess.”

I am assured that I’ll get the full story during the tour, however for now, we settle in and I ask about how production has gone on their latest album.

[Image ID: The cover of JUPITER’s latest album, _I Remember Your Sins_. It is black and white, Jupiter stands to the left, and has dark hair down to their shoulders. Their torso is covered by an image cut out of a woman wearing a black, mesh tank top with her hands in her jean pockets, and Jupiter’s legs and feet are covered by a second cut out image of a man in white short-shorts and ripped fish-net stockings. The background is pale grey, with a dark grey floor, JUPITER’s name sits on the righthand side of the image, with a pale grey line-art planet behind the “I”, and the name of the album is printed in rough typefont, all lowercase, emulating newspaper cut outs. The whole image has a black border that is thicker on the left and right sides. End ID.]

( _Editor’s Note: The two images that cover JUPITER’s body are famous stills of their parents, the torso being Lola Sixx from an image taken in 1981 that was published in The Dirt: Confessions of the Most Notorious Rock Band, while the legs are an image of Tommy Lee from a Motley Crue photoshoot from the early 1980s._ )

“I SUPPOSE it’s tied in to my whole family thing; I started work on my album near the start of filming for [ _The Dirt_ ], and so now that people who are invested in my family know who I am, I’ve gained a strange new following, who sort of expect me to be just like my family, I guess?”

For those at home who aren’t aware, _The Dirt_ is a Netflix original film that was released earlier this year, following the highs and lows of the band Motley Crue. In the film, JUPITER’s father, Tommy Lee _[played by Colson Baker]_ sleeps with the band’s long-time assistant Lola _[played by Alicia McIntyre]_ which ends up destroying his marriage to Heather Locklear _[played by Rebekah Graf]_ , mirroring real-life events, or so we were lead to believe.

“God f****** knows that I’m the last person in the world who would ever defend Lola f****** Sixx,” and as I wait for a follow up _'but’_ , I realise I may just be waiting forever, “so I won’t. My mom was a wild b****, but she was more than just a piece of a** to them, especially to dad. The movie’s kind of a s***show in that aspect,” JUPITER will later tell me, rolling their eyes, speaking both crudely and candidly about their own mother. They will go on to explain, in brief, that their mother had been emotionally involved with the band on a much deeper level than was portrayed in the film, even going as far to say that she and Tommy had been in love when JUPITER had been conceived, despite his marriage to the then-starlet Locklear.

But I digress, back in the present, in the cafe, they explain to me more about the album they’d just released, about the tour we were about to embark on, not that I hadn’t heard the full album, since it was part of my research for this piece, though it’s always fascinating to get an insight into the process.

 _I REMEMBER Your Sins_ is their second full length album under the name JUPITER, consisting of ten songs, including the three singles you probably already know. The first to be released in the wake of the film’s release was a collaboration with one of JUPITER’s long-time professional rivals, Machine Gun Kelly, which came as a surprise to fans of both artists. The pair had been asked to collaborate on a song for the film, with each having a verse in the newly re-edited and re-released single _The Dirt (Est. 1981),_ though their public rivalry goes way back to the release of JUPITER’s first album, _Stonehearted,_ in 2017 _,_ around the same time as MGK’s _Bloom_ album was being released. Since the film, however, there has been no public disagreements between the two, and JUPITER and MGK both feature on each other’s 2019 albums.

For MGK’s _Hotel Diablo_ , JUPITER features heavily in _Burning Memories_ with their own verse, surprising fans as Jupiter sings candidly about the toll the their parents’ lifestyle took on their childhood. MGK’s appearance on JUPITER’s _I Remember Your Sins_ , however, on the surprisingly suggestive _Anatomic,_ alludes _heavily_ to the surprisingly sordid personal history the two artists share, while being coy about confirming anything the whole time. We’ll come back to that single later, trust me, there’s more to that story.

Beyond _Anatomic,_ of course the second single is the beat-heavy and haunting _Earhart Under Pressure,_ which still has people speculating about the story behind it, with lyrics that include;

> _If I could see the mirrors in your eyes / who would we see? / Because they tell me that I look like you / but you look nothing like me. / Smash the mirrors / inhale the glass / could I get as high as you? / High like you still wanna be?_

The song is a collaboration between JUPITER and Penelope Dingley-Lee, and I am led to believe it is a poignant reflection on the experiences they shared growing up in the shadow of their parents’ immense legacies. For those of you who are unaware of who Penelope Dingley-Lee is, she is JUPITER’s real life cousin, and is the daughter of the late Charlotte Lee, cousin to Tommy Lee, and one of LA’s most prominent 80s socialites, and Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley, drummer for British rock band _Hanoi Rocks_ who passed in 1984 during a car crash that Vince Neil was responsible for.

While not known for her musical inclinations, it’s clear that Penelope has talent and potential, and the way her voice cracks in the second verse of the song is a moment of raw emotion that I have rarely heard captured in a studio recording.

The third and final single from the album, however, is the the one I’m really intrigued about; _bog mummy_ , the breakout dance hit that seems to not fit in with the rest of their repertoire. It’s the enthusiasm and pace of Bluejuice’s _Vitriol_ meets the heart and strange nostalgia of Ed Sheeran’s _Castle on the Hill_. You’ve heard it on the radio, in the clubs, in trendy stores all across the country, you know the lyrics without even thinking;

> _F**k it up / get up, and out there / jump / nothing defines the dead / don’t care if I’m busted up / you’re only gonna cry / if you let yourself down / so f**ck it up / get up, and out there / jump._

When I ask about it, JUPITER actually smiles.

“ _bog mummy_ was a collaboration with my siblings, actually, written for - and, well, by - my oldest brother Leo, and produced by my youngest brother Cyrus; Cy’s been wanting to break out into producing and Leo convinced me to give him a shot. It’s not my usual style, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the track. Leo’s not one for song writing, but he’s sort of a bizarre, chill dude, so every time he says like, some cool line off the top of his head, I’ll jot it down, and a lot of the lyrics came from that. He titled it too.”

This information comes as a surprise to me. While I was aware that JUPITER had two half-brothers, actor Brandon Lee, and musician Dylan Lee, born to Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson in the late 90s, Leo and Cyrus were names I thought I was unfamiliar with, until I realised JUPITER was talking about Lola Sixx’s children with her current husband, Nikki Sixx. They’re a little cagey about that, but admit that they have three half-siblings on their mother’s side; Leo Nicholas, Cyrus Michael, and Cerie Ellen. The conversation is changed quickly after this.

THE FULL track list for _I Remember Your Sins_ (2019) is as follows:

  1. _Good Grief and Alas! (Intro)_
  2. _Earhart Under Pressure ft. Penelope Dingley-Lee_
  3. _Deadly Virtues ft. Halsey_
  4. _Our Ancient Sins_
  5. _An Incomplete List Of Things My Therapist Doesn’t Want Me To Write Songs About - Interlude_
  6. _Theirs ft. King Princess_
  7. _Hollow At The Core_
  8. _Wheel of Eyes_
  9. _Resurrect Me In Any Image But Yours - Interlude_
  10. _If The Soul Is Unwilling_
  11. _Anatomic ft. Machine Gun Kelly_
  12. _Heavenly Vices_
  13. _Support Group For The Children Of Rock Stars - Interlude ft. Penelope Dingley-Lee, Cyrus Sixx, Leo Sixx, & Cerie Sixx_
  14. _bog mummy_



It’s not long until we’re leaving, the promise of more information regarding the album during the trip being given, and I head to my car where I’ve gotten all my clothes packed for the next three months on the road.

THE TOUR is set to head up and along the East Coast, before waving through the land-locked portion of our great nation, ending after a trip down the West Coast, in JUPITER’s home state of California. There’s talks of extending the tour internationally, but nothing has been officially announced as of yet.

As I wait in the hot sun for the tour bus to come and pick me up, I take the time to reflect on the meeting; the most notable thing about JUPITER is how guarded they are to speak to, not out of years of public relations training, as one might expect, but rather it’s a facet of their personality. Having interviewed their mother, Lola Sixx, on the red carpet for _The Dirt_ several months ago, it’s clearly an inherited trait, though I assume they’d be adverse to that particular insight if I were to bring it up.

Once upon the bus, I am quick to find that in the presence of their band and their manager Penelope, JUPITER is far calmer, less tense. The band is made up of other talented and outspoken member of the LGBT+ community, who all share a similar ‘cool and vaguely unapproachable’ vibe as JUPITER themselves, but once we’ve been on the road for a few hours, the unapproachable wears off.

Penelope Dingley-Lee herself is the spitting image of her mother, though after having heard _Earhart Under Pressure,_ I keep that opinion to myself, as I’m sure she’s heard it countless times before. Blonde, smartly dressed, and outgoing, she is a curious counterpoint to JUPITER’s reserved nature. She shakes my hand, introduces herself to me with a smile, and jokes about how she hopes JUPITER didn’t give me any trouble. This I find baffling, and it must read on my face, because Penelope seems to realise her mistake and is quick to explain that she’s known JUPITER far too long to not ‘ _pre-empt their shenanigans’._ It’s here that I am informed that after her parents’ passing, Penelope was raised by Tommy Lee primarily, alongside Lola Sixx, and in part by Pamela Anderson, as JUPITER’s sibling.

At first glance they do not look alike, so you’ll have to forgive my initial surprise; maybe there's some similarities in their cheek bones, something about their equally slim builds, but they just as easily could have been friends as they could have been family. It only takes hearing them in conversation to confirm Penelope’s words, and to realise they've obviously spent their lives together. The usually somewhat reserved JUPITER all but moons over Penelope, and seems surprised when I admit to initially not knowing much about her.

We're seated in the uncomfortable little booth by the kitchenette in the tour bus, on our way to Jacksonville, a few hours in to the drive. JUPITER and Penelope share one side of the booth, more than comfortable with casual contact in the limited space, side by side, Penelope's arm thrown over the back of the sofa while JUPITER is playing with a loose piece of thread on the older woman's sweater.

"Our family has always sort of kept me out of the spotlight," Penelope admits, and though it appears as though JUPITER wants to make comment, judging by their snicker, Penelope gives them a look that they don't see, and she tells them, "don't."

My confusion, again, must show on my face when JUPITER looks up, because they catch my reaction and simply smirk, looking to Penelope.

"That's because they actually care about you."

"You are such an edgelord; I thought you and Lola were on better terms since [the premiere of _The Dirt_ ]," is Penelope's response, accompanied by a roll of the eyes that is almost painfully familiar, and for just a moment, she's the picture of her mother. Despite JUPITER’s documented grievances with their family, they clearly bare no ill will towards Penelope as they give her a helpless shrug, resting their chin on her shoulder. For just a moment, I feel as though I'm watching a memory, a recording of Lola Sixx and Charlotte Dingley as they had often been in the background of Motley Crue footage back in the 80s, amusing themselves.

Later, JUPITER will tell me that yes, they and their mother are working on reconciling their rocky relationship, but they refuse to divulge any further than that.

[ID: Four images.

The top left image is of Charlotte Lee in 1983, a polaroid published in _The Dirt: Confessions of the Most Notorious Rock Band_. Charlotte is a light skinned woman with fair hair that comes down to her chest, and brown eyes. She is wearing a oversized brown, knitted sweater with flower prints, over a brown button-down, and large, black, circular earrings. She is looking into the camera, and her left hand is raised, with her chin resting lightly on her knuckles. The bottom left image is Penelope Dingley Lee in 2019, taken from her Instagram, @penelopedingley. Penelope is a pale woman with blonde hair pulled into a tight bun, and blue eyes. She is wearing a white sweater with a deep neckline, and her left hand is raised to her cheek, her head tilted slightly to rest against her hand.

The top right image is in black and white, and is of Lola Sixx in 1982, taken from _Circus_ magazine’s online archive, originally published in December, 1982. Lola is a tan woman with dark hair that comes down to her shoulders, wearing an open, collared jacket with nothing underneath. She is looking directly at the camera. The bottom right image is of JUPITER in 2018, taken from their Instagram, @publicenemyinorbit. JUPITER is tan, with dark hair that comes down to their shoulders. They’re wearing a black blazer and their chest is bare apart from the string of a black bra across. They hold a cigarette in their left hand.

End ID.]

I’M INTRODUCED to the rest of the band quickly; the rhythm section is comprised of Olivier and Archer Roach, a sister and brother on drums and bass respectively. You may recognize them from their stage-wear, which favours Day-Glo green, a surprisingly complimentary color against their dark skin. Olivier keeps her hair buzzed short, while Archer sports a set of the tallest liberty spikes I’ve ever seen, both apparently keeping up a consistent bleach and dye schedule to match their hair to their outfits at all times. A formidable duo, each sporting enough piercings to set off any metal detector, they, like JUPITER, are quite reserved to begin with, but once they warm to you they become almost dangerously funny.

Bernadette Yekanians, whom everyone refers to as Beans, plays lead guitar in pastel pink. It’s her first tour; she’s easily excited, drinks a lot of coffee, and quickly becomes a good friend of mine. She knows everyone’s drink orders by heart, and always brings extra water bottles in her bag to hand out in the dressing rooms before a show, while also being the first to tell me any time a piece of gossip surfaces.

The dark horse of the band, however, is Roan Young, ironically the oldest member of the band, though he still manages to be the closest to JUPITER in age, and he barely speaks a word. Dressed down in subtly-pattered button-ups and crisp, black jeans, he plays keyboard like it’s his calling in life while apparently trying to chain smoke a watermelon vape; he is the only one who doesn’t sing backup vocals, but he has a surprisingly expressive face, and a very calm aura, if you believe in that sort of thing. The moment I extend my hand to him, he gives me a very deliberate look over, not in a leering way, it’s more evaluative than anything else, and thankfully he must see something he likes, because he gives me a nod and shakes my hand.

None of them ever look like they’re going to the same event, yet somehow, together, they all make sense.

EACH MEMEBER of the band is eager to talk to me about the new album, each with their own favourite songs, and different insights on what went into the track, their own experiences separate from JUPITER’s, and over the first week, the first few stops of the tour, I get to hear them all.

Beans sprains her ankle during _bog mummy_ while playing at Rockingham, North Carolina, and confines in me after the show that while she enjoyed the smash hit, her favourite song to both listen to _and_ play was _Deadly Virtues_.

“[JUPITER]’s voice is like honey on the studio recording,” she tells me, “like, they always get so intense whenever this one comes up, and-” in her excitement, she’d made the strapping on her ankle too tight, and is, for the barest moment, put out as she rights it, but is quick to recover and finally, she turns back to me, “and it was so lovely to work with Halsey! She’s so talented, you know, and it just- so I came across this playlist on Spotify that opened with Deadly Vices, it was called, _Songs to F**k or Murder To,_ I think, [sic] and I was like, you know, you right!”

THEY DON’T play the full track list of the album, with the introduction, all three of the interludes, as well as _Earhart Under Pressure, Anatomic,_ and _Hollow At The Core_ , being left off of the setlist, but they supplement those with some of the singles JUPITER has released, both from their last album, and in the time since, the songs people are more familiar with. This includes the 2017 Summer break out hit _The Shot That Killed Achilles_ , as well as the hype anthem that is _King of the Castle_ , the bass drop of which always causes crowds to all but lose their minds.

 _King of the Castle_ happens to be Roan’s favourite song to play, he confides in me. We’re sitting in a roadside diner on the border of Texas; he’s changing the coil in his vape pen with a practiced precision, not looking at me. The rest of the band is at the counter, all clustered together and reading the menu, while Penelope and our driver are talking by the tour bus. When I ask Roan to elaborate, ask him what he likes about the song, he says, “the start,” and doesn’t look up from where he’s carefully putting a new coil in with tweezers.

I’m well aware that he’s not particularly talkative, however after this I do observe him closely during the following night’s performance. The studio recording of _King of the Castle_ features a sample of audio from the sitcom _Community,_ Season 3, Episode 21: _The First Chang Dynasty,_ wherein one of the characters plays a fast and messy series of notes on a keytar twice, holding the final note each time, followed by a clip of one of the characters saying ‘ _you’re still into keytar?_ ’ as the song starts. It’s a song that gets you hyped up, the first two verses, as well as the first chorus, serving a buildup for the bass drop that hides the key-change in the bridge before the second chorus. The song goes hard for it’s full three and a half minutes, and it’s the first viral hit the band had.

On stage, Roan and his keyboard begin the song in a spotlight, the iconic, well known quick notes delivered as an excited hush falls over the crowd; they all know what’s coming, they’ve been waiting for it. Then, the laugh in Beans’ voice, ‘ _you’re still into keytar_?’ is the cue for lights to flood the stage, and the Roach siblings to crash through the beginning of the song, and JUPITER jumps about stage singing for the audience to dance like there’s nobody watching. As the tension and music is building all through the second verse, Roan is in his element, his work reminding me strikingly of the keyboard in _Holding Out For A Hero_ by Bonnie Tyler, right up until the music reaches it’s peak, the band goes dead silent, and JUPITER snarls into the microphone, “ _The king is dead!”_ and holds out their microphone to the audience, glowing with the sweat of exertion, breathing heavily as shouts back the lyrics they know all too well;

> _LONG LIVE THE KING!_

The bass drops, and JUPITER collapses onto the stage, breathing heavily and beaming at the feeling of their band still playing around them, the crowd making the venue shake with how enthusiastically their moving, the crowd chanting ‘ _The King is dead! Long live the King!’_

They stay there for the remainder of the song, catching their breath and taking in the moment, letting the crowd go off with the coda of the song, raising the microphone to their lips only for the final words, taking a deep breath and hollering, “ _Off with my fucking head!”_ as the audience roars with praise, and finally, they get to their feet. Every time the song ends, I’ve come to realise, they look to Roan, and every time he will give them a single nod, and a rare smile, which always makes JUPITER grin in return. There’s a quiet understanding between them that a lot of people miss, and, when you finally come to behold it the way I have, you appreciate the stability Roan provides, both to the band, and to JUPITER, more than you would realise.

JUPITER, I’M told by several source, the band _and_ Penelope included, lacked a sense of stability earlier in their life, which was at the time conductive to their creativity, but it was also conductive to the temper they had inherited from both parents. The most well known incident, of course, was the bar fight from 2010, wherein a patron had verbally harassed JUPITER, then fronting _Childhood Knife Fight_ under the stage name _Lisa Lotte Lee,_ about their family, and JUPITER had leapt from the stage and gotten into a fight with the patron. The patron did not press charges.

“We were there,” Olivier tells me, delighted to recount the story, “that’s why we wanted to be in a band with them, [sic] f****** nuts, we loved it.” She’s referring, of course, to herself and her brother, who’s currently restringing his bass several feet away.

“Had to wait, they had a whole dark period after that and we can’t really blame them, but we made friends with Roan after the show. He seemed like the only one who still wanted anything to do with JUPITER after that night, [sic] all the paramedics and s***; the rest of the band left them both there. A******s.”

“Bunch of f****** a******s,” Archer doesn’t look up from his bass to chime in an agreement.

“Who?” Penelope, who had, up until this point, been backstage, joins us with a takeaway coffee in hand.

“ _Childhood Knife Fight_ , apart from Roan and JUPITER, of course,” Olivier holds out her hand expectantly to Penelope as she’s speaking, and Penelope doesn’t even seem to hesitates before handing over her drink.

“F****** a*******,” Penelope agrees with them both as Olivier takes a sip of her coffee and wrinkles her nose, handing it back, which devolves into a strangely domestic argument about how Olivier can’t stand how sweet Penelope likes her coffee, and Penelope arguing back that she could have waited five minutes for Beans to come back with everyone else’s drinks instead of stealing hers and complaining about it.

( _Editor’s note: Childhood Knife Fight disbanded in 2013, and had not released any original musical content since Roan Young’s departure in 2011 on the basis of ‘creative differences’_.)

WHEN I ask about the siblings’ favourite songs, both to play, and on the album, they're unanimous in that _bog mummy_ is their favourite to play; it’s intense and demanding to play, the final song of the setlist before possible encores, and just as it gets the audiences’ blood pumping, so too does it get the rhythm section of the band, the two who are heralded by the whole band as being the heart of the song’s live performance.

However, when I ask about their favourite songs on the album, their answers surprise me.

“JUPITER and I co-wrote _Wheel of Eyes,_ so that one’s always going to hold a special place in my heart,” Olivier tells me after considering for a moment, “I don’t write a lot, but they came to me with this idea for a song about something that we both feel quite strongly about, which is that neither of us present ourselves in a way that is, for lack of a better phrase, [sic] palatable to those comfortable within the gender binary, nor does Archer, obviously, but he didn’t want anything to do with the lyrics.”

“What I loved about _Stonehearted_ [JUPITER’s first album, 2017] and _I Remeber Your Sins,_ and actually, what I love about JUPITER themselves, is how high-concept they can go while still managing to be relatable; _Wheel of Eyes_ is all about, when you really look at what it’s saying, it’s about not looking like people expect you to, or want you to, but not caring because _you_ like how you look, how you present yourself, and telling the world who doesn’t like you to get f*****,” the only time I think I’ve seen Olivier this passionate or excited was on stage, “and JUPITER took all this, and took the whole biblical-overtones they were going for with this album, and they looked at me and said, ‘ _okay by what if you could be a flaming wheel of eyes’_ and I looked back without even thinking, after hours of working on this concept and this song, and said ‘ _that’s the dream’._ It exactly captures what the song’s about, we want to be able to look however we want, and still be able to f*** up the people who criticize us because _they_ don’t see the appeal in our look. We’re not made for your consumption. So, _Wheel of Eyes_.” 

When this question is posed to Archer, however, his answer is much simpler.

“ _Support Group for the Children of Rock Stars_ ,” he tells me without hesitation, completely deadpan, surprisingly claiming the final interlude on the album as his favourite, “Seo Sixx is the funniest motherf***** on this planet and that is a fact.” Apparently, both he and Olivier agree on this, which surprises me, though Olivier teases her brother for having a crush on him, to which I am then let in on the in-joke that everyone on the tour, who isn’t related to him, has a crush on Leo ‘ _Seo’_ Sixx, JUPITER’s half-brother.

Yes, including Roan, who shrugs, but doesn’t deny it.

 _Yes_ , including Beans, who has described herself on multiple occasions as ‘ _too gay to function’_ and ‘ _a whole damn lesbian’._

“Have you ever seen a man so beautiful you started crying?” Beans asks me when I ask her about it. I’m not quite sure what she means, until she pulls out her phone and shows me the lock screen; it’s of a beautiful man with short, dark hair and dark eyes in a beige suit. She tells me it’s Leo Sixx, and that he’s her lock screen because it irks JUPITER; when she calls out to the rest of the band, they each reveal to have the same photo of Leo as their lockscreen, including Penelope, while JUPITER rolls their eyes.

The fascinating part, however, is explained when Penelope joins us at the back of the bus. Leo Sixx, aged 26, six years younger than JUPITER, has only once shown his face publicly since turning 18, and no pictures are publicly available of him before then. The photo that each member of the band has as their lock screen is from that public appearance, from the premiere of _The Dirt_ , and when I question if it’s because he’s a private figure, Penelope actually laughs.

I am ashamed to say that it is only now that I am made aware of the connection between Leo Sixx, and the professional skateboarder _Seo_ , whom JUPITER is a known sponsor of.

[ID: Three images of Leo ‘Seo’ Sixx, in color.

The first is from Leo Sixx’s public Instagram, @fourwheelsixx, and is his most recent post as of this publication. It’s photo of Leo Sixx from the waist up. He is wearing a black hoodie pulled tight around his face, so all that is visible is one eye, and a small section of his cheek. Both his hands are giving peace signs, however his right hand is closer to the camera. There is a fire alarm on the grey wall behind him.

The second is from Leo Sixx’s Instagram story in 2017, archived by tumblr user @boyswhoride. It is a very close, partial shot of Leo Sixx’s face as he is drinking dark liquid from a glass that had two golden decorative bands printed on it, with a fleur de lis pattern near the top. The glass obscures most of his face so that all that can be seen is his eyes looking down at the glass, and his hand holding the glass. He wears a thick, silver ring on his middle finger. He is tan.

The third is a Getty Images photo of Leo Sixx from _The Dirt_ premiere in 2019, reposted first on Cerie Sixx’s public Instagram, @ceriethree, initially posted alongside nine other photos from the premiere. It is an image of Leo Sixx from the chest up. Leo is a pale man with short, dark hair that is slightly mussed. His eyes are dark, and he has a faint moustache and goatee. He wears a pale, beige,, tartan suit jacket, and a button-up shirt with a black and cream honeycomb pattern. His left hand is raised and in his hair.

End ID.]

( _Editor’s note: The second image is the only image of Leo Sixx that was publicly available before 2019 where his face was unobscured by his hoodie, glasses, or some other material._ )

IT SURPRISES me to find out that the way to get JUPITER to speak honestly about their family is not by asking about their parents, as this just makes them shut down, obviously sick of being asked about that. Instead, they granted me a surprisingly raw and honest insight into their family history when I asked about their siblings. Something about sitting in a diner in the middle of Boston, Lola Sixx’s hometown, getting dinner with just JUPITER before a show, feels oddly fitting for me to be asking these questions.

“Pam - _Pamela Anderson_ ,” JUPITER clarifies, surprising me with how they begin, “was a lovely stepmom for a few years, honestly, she really tried. I know it wasn’t easy on her, but she was actually in my life a lot more than Lola was for the years she and dad were married.” They hesitate for a moment, suddenly uncomfortable with the direction their own recollections have taken, “and it’s not my place to discuss what went down between her and dad, but we’re still on good terms. So when they split up, she took Brandon and Dylan; they were just babies at the time, but I was about ten, I think, and I knew _why_ it was happening, but at the same time, it didn’t really make sense, if that makes sense? Brandon and Dylan are just as much my brothers as Seo and Cyrus, but they always felt more like _Pam’s sons,_ rather than my brothers. Pam ended up getting full custody of them after a few years of joint custody, and dad being an asshole about it and trying to incite his own sons against their mom. It was _f*****_ , they were _toddlers,_ ” and even as they say it, JUPITER sounds _horrified_ at recounting what their father had done, “he was never awful to the boys, and it was never overt, but it was insidious, you know? Stuff that Penny and I, when we would hear it, we knew better than to internalize that kind of negativity since we’d known her just as long as dad had, and we knew he was just angry, but we were like - I think I was eleven then? And Penny would have been about fourteen? - but those boys were so impressionable, parroting everything they heard, you know? I’m actually glad she got full custody at the time, honestly.” Letting out a long, suddenly exhausted breath, they sit back in the booth with their arms crossed, looking up at the ceiling; all I can do is keep quiet, hanging on their every year.

“But it was a really rough time, especially since Penny and I were still living with him during the week; [Child Protective Services] had this whole big investigation into our situation, so Penny and I ended up lived with Lola and Nikki for about six months too, since Lola’s, you know, my mom, and she and dad legally adopted Penny when she was six. Losing literally all of his kids essentially at once hit dad like a f****** bus. At least he cleaned up his act after that, actually got some serious therapy; that’s the only thing I can remember me and Lola agreeing on in those six months, is that that’s something dad really needed. But I actually got really close with Seo, even though he was about six at the time, the kid followed me like a little duck, but I couldn’t wait to get out of that house, get away from Lola and Nikki and the twins, who’s just been born.”

“They told me it was different when I was a baby, but Lola and dad were actually together then; for what feels like my whole childhood, I saw Lola at holidays and birthdays, and _maybe_ for a few days every other month. Even when dad wasn’t there, I was in his house; nan and pop raised me and Penny pretty much every time dad went on tour, but I was just so f****** disconnected from Lola, you know? And then Seo was born and suddenly she and Nikki had me and Penny over every weekend, and then we had to live with them because all the CPS stuff, and all I ever saw was Lola coming home from work every day all f****** saccharine and happy smiles, making time to take care of Seo and Cyrus and Cerie, and [sic] I swear to you I have never been as mad in my life as I was for those six months when I was twelve. Seo understands a lot better than either of the twins, I think. He got the mid-range Lola experience; she was still kind of f***** in the latter-half of the nineties.”

“Sorry, I know this isn’t therapy, and thousands of people are probably going to end up reading this,” looking back at me again, it’s as if I’m snapped from my trance, and remember that we’re in the middle of a very public diner, “but, back to your original question; I’m closer with the Sixx-kids than I am with either of my Lee-brothers, because dad and Lola and Nikki, even now, are still weirdly close - _not -”_ they’re quick to clarify with a hint of self deprecation, “ _\- as close as they were in the eighties_ \- but with Pam, after her first split from dad, I don’t know, I just never had the same sense of connection with Dylan and Brandon.”

“I’m just glad Penny’s legally my sister, she’s the only one I actually like,” they end with a joke, and I’m glad to feel the tension leaving the conversation. I know that Penelope Dingley-Lee’s place in the family is a whole other can of worms, so for now I will leave it closed. For tonight, it’s enough for me to muse on.

Later, side of stage as the band is warming up, I do tentatively ask Penelope why JUPITER may have been so forthcoming, and she gives me a look that I can’t quite read, a look which. While it’s a strange look on Penelope, is reminiscent of something I have seen in old interviews of Charlotte Lee, when asked about Motley Crue’s less than polite antics and reputation.

“JUPITER hates Boston,” I’m surprised, I hadn’t picked up on this at all, they’d seemed perfectly at home and calm in the diner earlier, despite our topic of conversation, “we’ve got family out here. You saw [ _The Dirt_ ], you know what happened between Lola and her mom,” I do, vaguely, as does everyone else.

FOR ALL that Motley Crue have been open with their various pasts, Lola Sixx had never been particularly outspoken about her childhood before running away to LA with Nikki Sixx at the age of sixteen. Her two chapters in _The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band_ had come in to talk more about Charlotte Lee’s disappearance, and then again later when she and the band had gone into rehab after her self having died twice. The large scars that have covered her back, while a staple part of her look during the late eighties and early nineties, went largely unexplained until the film alluded to her own mother being the cause of them.

“We have an Uncle out here, Milo; for all that Lola hates her own mom, she did actually reconnect with Milo back in, like, 2007? But he’s a nurse, and currently their mom’s live-in carer, so Lola hasn’t spoken to him for almost five years. He’s not that much older than me and JUPITER.”

IT’S ONLY when I’m laying in my uncomfortable hotel bed after another successful show, now with Beans, my designated roommate, asleep and snoring in the bed next to me, that I find myself ruminating on what JUPITER and Penelope have said, and how, if at all, it relates to JUPITER’s music. While at first glance, _Earhart Under Pressure_ is the most personal song on the album, and while that is certainly true in regards to both JUPITER and Penelope’s relationship with their family and their self image, I’ve always been fascinated with _Resurrect Me In Any Image But Yours - Interlude_ , and just how much it says about JUPITER in words they had not written themselves.

 _Resurrect Me In Any Image But Yours - Interlude_ is a strange song that stands out among the track list for _I Remember Your Sins_ , a lofi interlude comprised of different voices reading short prose and poetry, and three separate audio samples from Bojack Horseman.

It’s important to note that each of the samples from Bojack Horseman include Jupiter’s voice layered beneath the original audio, saying the quotes almost in sync with it.

The following pieces comprise _Resurrect Me In Any Image But Yours - Interlude:_

> _“Sometimes i feel like i was born with a leak, and any goodness i started with just slowly spilled out of me, and now it's all gone. And I'll never get it back in me. It's too late.”_ \- Bojack Horseman

> _“I liked the idea of living in a city — any city, especially a strange one — liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, and nobody knowing who I was.“_ \- The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

> _“You come by it honestly, the ugliness inside you. You were born broken, that's your birthright. There’s no cure for that.”_ \- Bojack Horseman

> _“You wear an ancestor’s face. In that mirror, there’s thousands of you, and in the bath, when you look down, they look back, shaking and deforming in the ripples as they lie beneath the surface.”_ \- Unknown

> _“I come from poison. I have poison inside me, and I destroy everything I touch. That's my legacy. I have nothing to show for the life that I've lived, and I have nobody in my life who's better off for having known me.”_ \- Bojack Horseman

> _“Tell me how it is, being the sun. You could walk into a room and they’d all be watching you. They’d all get down on their knees. I ask you how it is, and you say, “It hurts. It hurts.”_ \- Sunlit by R. Wright

> _“You were burned, you were about to burn, you’re still on fire.”_ \- straw house, straw dog by Richard Siken

If you will allow me to editorialize for a moment, I have spent almost a month trying to decipher this piece in my mind, and I believe finally I have come to understand it. This song is Jupiter trying to reconcile their past and their present, and their identity, through their music, and not exactly liking the conclusion that they’ve come to. Listening to it with an understanding JUPITER’s context, it’s it’s own kind of tragic. JUPITER’s fear of repeating their parents mistakes has been an heavily implied theme in more than a few of their songs on this album, most notably in _Our Ancient Sins_ and _Heavenly Vices_ , but never has it been more blatant than it is here. Factoring in the knowledge that JUPITER’s mother herself had a negative childhood, it gives a voice to the fear of this not only being just an inherited trait from Lola’s scandalous young lifestyle, but a generational cycle, as if JUPITER was doomed before they were conceived, as if they’re aware, in part, that Lola was too. Even the title itself plays into this, considering the constant comparison drawn between Lola and JUPITER.

The whole world knows of the nasty and hedonistic antics Motley Crue and their associates got up to at the height of their popularity, and now with the release of _The Dirt_ , that image of debauchery has just been reinforced in the public’s eye, it’s no wonder that JUPITER, who is choosing to go down a somewhat similar career path, is afraid of repeating those mistakes, considering they and their cousin Penelope, the person with whole they have often admitted they are closest to, more than almost anyone else have had to bare the consequences of their family’s poor decisions.

A LOT happens during our next stop, New York, enough that I don’t have time to discuss with Penelope her thoughts and experiences as part of JUPITER’s family. Instead, not only do we get to spend time with another member of JUPITER’s family, but JUPITER releases a music video the afternoon before their first night at Madison Square Garden.

When we arrive in town just after midday, JUPITER’s the one who suggests going out for lunch, advising that both their sister, and, much to my confusion, Machine Gun Kelly [MGK], are in town. The resturant they have chosen is surprisingly upscale, and it’s rather delightful to see the band in contrast to the much more traditional lunchtime diners. At a large table by the window, Cerie Sixx and Machine Gun Kelly are already waiting.

IN 2017, MGK’s song _Bad Things_ , created in collaboration with Camilla Cabello, had won the Radio Disney Music Award for Best Musical Collaboration, beating, among others, _Medusa_ by JUPITER, which featured Blondie’s front woman Debbie Harry. JUPITER, less than impressed with the result, took to Twitter to praise Cabello’s talents, but lament that they were ‘ _unfortunately wasted on another average white boy’s song about sex’_. Of course, when several celebrity news outlets picked up the story, and MGK’s retweet that comprised of a sarcastic apology about how ‘ _we can’t all write songs about how our famous parents suck’,_ the feud became public.

“It was never a private feud; it started on Twitter, sometimes it was mentioned in interviews, we never put it in our music because it wasn’t, like, _real_ beef, but I have never taken back anything I have ever said about him,” JUPITER, sitting next to MGK, leaning against him, tell me as we wait for our food to be delivered, “society has moved past the need for white boys to write songs about heterosexual sex.”

“So if I wrote about you...?” MGK’s tone speaks _volumes_ , which appears to delight JUPITER, and kind of horrify the rest of the band, and their siblings. At least for me, and probably for my future readers, however, this conversation is turning into a series of expectation-shattering confirmations.

“I’d be _delighted_ ,” JUPITER responds to him, before addressing me once more, “for the record, before you ask, _Anatomic_ is _my_ song that _he’s_ featuring on; I’m not featuring on some white boy’s song about sex.”

“I’m featuring about their song about sex, and they’re featuring on my song about hating parents,” at least they both seem to be self aware, and find the humor in the irony.

As lunch is wrapping up, however, Penny surprises us all by announcing that their music video is apparently ready for publication.

I HAVE always wondered, readers, what the moment before a natural disaster occurs feels like, but something about this moment felt pretty darn close; like dogs that can sense an Earthquake, like a surfer watching the tide disappear before a tidal wave, like watching Mount Vesuvius erupt from Pompeii, we were eating overpriced desserts like nothing was wrong while the internet proceeded to explode.

If you were one of the first to watch the music video for _Anatomic_ , there’s a good chance you watched it before either JUPITER or MGK had, neither one having seen the final product, but both admitting to be too nervous to watch it in public. At the table, we all wait too, as some sort of curtesy, and once we’re all finished and heading to the venue, they give us their blessing to watch it as they’re getting into their own car. Everyone else refuses to get in after them, and advises that I keep my distance too; Penelope calls them quite disgusting, and actually snorts when I ask about their so-called feud. It’s not that I was blind to their closeness at lunch, but I’d rather not print unsubstantiated hearsay.

“It’s been over a year since they actually hated each other.”

When I turn my attention to Cerie Sixx, JUPITER’s younger sister, better known as the lifestyle and beauty influencer _Cerie Three_ , to see if I could gain any further insight on their relationship, she, and Penny behind her, make identical faces of displeasure.

“I’m happy for them,” Cerie says, in a tone that says otherwise, “but it’ll always be weird that they hooked up while [ _The Dirt_ ] was filming -”

“They never expressed interest in him while he was in costume or in character,” Penny’s quick to jump in, “Jup would kill me if I didn’t clarify.”

“Still weird;” Cerie says, “you didn’t see me or Cyrus going after Douglas, did you?” At this, Penny is tellingly silent, “they’ve always respected each other a lot more than either has let one,” Cerie explains, “they’re incredibly similar and work well together, their relationship isn’t a surprise.”

I SHARE a car with both Penny and Cerie to MSG Stadium, eager to hear Cerie’s opinion on her sibling’s music in the short time that she’ll be spending with us, considering how much of JUPITER’s music is thematically linked to their family. Between studying full-time in New York, and building her personal brand from her successful YouTube career, she doesn’t get the chance to spend much time with her LA-based family.

“Jup’s music’s always been fascinating to me, even if we’ve never been especially close. I love them dearly, but when I was younger, despite Penny spending weekends [sic] with us and mom, Jupiter, for as long as I can remember, lived with Tommy full time since they had a choice,” Penny, sitting beside Cerie, is looking between us both as the younger woman speaks, as if ready to smash the voice recorder in my hand at a moment’s notice should Cerie say anything damning by accident, though Cerie herself seems lost in thought, “it’s getting better now, I’m getting to know them when I can, which is nice, and for me, part of that is listening to their music.”

“Jup and I had the same mom, but it’s like we knew two completely different people, each of my older siblings is a _what-if_ of me, where the main variable is ‘ _what if mom was different_ ’, so I’m just trying to understand JUPITER, you know? I’m in my second year of Psychology, so hearing how they process all of their thoughts and feelings through music, it’s _so_ interesting to me on that level too.”

Cerie and JUPITER were born twelve years apart, and though they share a few key similarities, that being the darkness of their hair, their olive complexion, the shape of their eyes, their differences reflect their fathers. JUPITER’s lean and wiry, with sharp cheekbones and hazel eyes, and a chaotic demeanour when the mood struck them, while Cerie is softer, with green eyes like her father, and seems far more down-to-Earth in her youth than JUPITER reportedly was. However, in moments like this, the introspective and analytical way they talk about themselves, about their families, and their understanding of their world, they sound similar, and like their mother did in her later years. 

For all that JUPITER dislikes comparisons being drawn between themself and their mother, they already, and please note that I mean this as a compliment, are something of a reflection of her better years.

But as soon as I have this thought, Cerie is pulling out her phone, eager to watch the new music video. 

AND THAT afternoon in New York marks a turning point on tour.

I find myself sitting in one of Madison Square Garden’s greenrooms two and a half hours before the band is set to perform, hunched over my phone, watching _Anatomic’_ s music video over and over again. I have been writing for several years now, and not once have I been part of a _moment_ like this, or so captivated by an artist’s music video.

 _Anatomic’_ s video, in a word, is haunting.

> [ID: A YouTube video embedded into the article. The thumbnail is of JUPITER and Machine Gun Kelly horizontal in frame, laying side by side on their backs, on operating tables, next to, and looking at, each other, only visible from their navels up. JUPITER is a tanned person with dark, shoulder-length hair; they are only wearing a simple, black sports bra, and there is black, dotted-line markings in marker on their torso, like guide lines. Machine Gun Kelly is a pale man with short, bleached-blonde hair. He is covered in tattoos from his neck-down, and his hands are tied to the table with leather cuffs by his sides. The background is a checkered pale blue and black floor. The image is cool-toned, and their expressions are neutral.

> _**JUPITER ft. Machine Gun Kelly - Anatomic [official music video]** _

> Video Description:

> The whole video is taken in a single shot, the camera panning back agonizingly slowly the whole time, barely noticeable until you realise how much you can see of them at the end. Both MGK and JUPITER are on their backs, head to head, as the centerpiece for a table piled high with decadent platters of fruits and meats. Arms by their sides, they’re dressed in pale Grecian-style togas, though all that can be seen of either of them is of their chest and head.

> The lighting has the shot looking like a Chiaroscuroan painting, the two singers cast in sharp relief by the light, highlighted on the table in their pale garbs while the food around them is saturated with rich, dark colours, and the floor beneath is practically invisible for the shadows. As they sing, hands reach out to messily snatch and grab at the food on the table, at two singers who refuse to react, even as feverish, desperate hands stain their attire, goblets of wine sloshing in their hurry from one set of hands to the next, snatching more food greedily, before being swallowed up by the dark too.

> **_My ribcage like the doors you pry open / to get yourself under my skin. / See your fingerprints, your hands on my cold heart / how you staked your claim right from the start / I want to feel your touch from the outside-in._ **

> _**I’d break every lens that seen your head / between someone else’s thighs. / ‘cause I’ve watched you fake love and fake laugh / and maybe I should be mad on the worlds’ behalf / since the way you are in my bed screams it’s all lies.** _

> JUPITER has their eyes open, looking directly into camera, shifting from moment to moment as if in discomfort, or simply unable to stay still, hands clenching and unclenching by their sides, twitching when they’re touched, like they’re restraining themselves. The look in their eyes is _desperate_ , and suddenly the movements read as wanton rather than uncomfortable. MGK has his eyes closed, laying still; someone presses a cherry to his lips, and he takes a bite before someone else snatches it away. Some else presses a bottle of dark wine to his lips, and thought he opens his mouth, they keep pouring wine until his mouth is overflowing; he doesn’t flinch. Once the bottle is snatched away, he closes his mouth, and swallows, the leftover dark liquid clinging to his cheeks and jaw in droplets.

> But as the chorus comes in, the hands start snatching at the bowls, the plates, the napkins left over, and the table they’re laying on is a dull, silver metal, an operating table. MGK’s eyes open with the chorus too, and his voice joins JUPITER’s, his lyrics low and even, like a call and response, a strange answer to the words they sing.

> _**I think your fingers were made to unthread me / (I need to touch you ‘til I can’t feel a thing) / Grinding me down to my base components / (I’ll tear you apart, baby I’ll make you sing) / Don’t be gentle with me, I’ll be rebuilt / (Repaired cracks with gold, fit for a king) / I see the Sword of Damocles hanging above / (I wonder who will snap and sever the string)** _

> In the moments before the second verse, MGK’s verse, the light shifts dramatically, a white, overhead fluorescent overexposing the scene in a flash of white, revealing the old, checked hospital style floor. Everything is tinted blue and silver and dark grey, low contrast making the floor beneath the table and it’s brightly lit occupant look hazy, while even the faceless doctors’ scrubs and hairnets, the clipboards and diagrams, and the handles of scalpels being passed back and forth on a silver tray, were that same, artificially cool-toned and rather desaturated blue.

> While MGK is seemingly distracted by the sudden light, throwing his arm up to shield his eyes, JUPITER is quickly rolled away. His verse starts as a pair of hands wearing blue rubber gloves grab his hand, forcing it back to the table and strapping it down, following suit with his other hand, and his feet, in old-timey brown leather straps, as he tries to look around for JUPITER as his verse starts, and he’s wheeled into the center, into the unflinching light.

> Someone grabs his head, holding it in place while they wipe the wine from his face, while someone unties the garment from where it was fixed in place by his shoulder, pulling it from him, leaving what is visible in frame, which his from his navel up, exposed. Various sets of hands, all with blue gloves, pass medical equipment over the top of him, a diagram of a human body on a clipboard, dotted and sectioned like a dissection chart help up by his chest for reference.

> _**Everyone wants to know everything / they wanna know me inside out / but you’re the only one / I’m ever fuckin’ thinkin’ about. / Got me scratched to shit, I’ve been dissected for fun, / motherfuckers who don’t hear me when I'm saying that you might be the one. / Got the exclusive, baby, I’m still dreamin’ ‘bout the way you move your hips, / they can all die jealous since I know the taste of your lips. / Let me let you love you like we’re sacrificial virgins tonight, / like it’s nothing and everything and I think I never want it to stop.** _

> And JUPITER’s wheeled back out beside him for the chorus, their table being pushed beside his so they can share the center. They’re stripped down with only a set of black underwear for modesty, marked like the diagram, black lines as if to say ‘ _cut here’,_ but not bound _._ Neither is looking at the camera for the bridge, now side by side, they’re looking at each other, while faceless doctors untie MGK from the table.

> _**Would I say yes to some peace if it meant I never saw you again? / Giving in to the chaos just to touch you, tryna’ keep myself sane** _ _**. / Sayin’ yes to the peace, but without you there’s no peace in my brain. / Watch me revel in the chaos if it means you keep on screamin’ my name.** _

> And then, four hands lift the table MGK had been laying on, angling it swiftly so he falls almost onto JUPITER, bracing himself at the last minute with a hand by their head as they’re both shoved into the center along with the table they now shared. We see that he’s wearing black briefs.

> The whole scene shifts again, an impressive feat for a shot that still has not been interrupted by any sort of cuts since it started. Curtains drop all around them, and are pulled out of shot, allowing a breeze to faintly ruffle their hair, and flooding them both with the warm, fully saturated golden light of sunset. The flooring is pulled back to reveal lush, green grass, and this new lighting exposes the rough edges of the table they’re on, that they’re on a stone slab, like a sacrificial alter. This time, there’s no-one else around. The sunlight is coming at them from the direction MGK is facing as he sits back and straddle’s JUPITER’s thighs. They both _glow_ golden at every point where the sun touches, arms, chests, faces, while everything behind MGK’s back is cast in shadows.

> With his head tipped back to the sky and eyes closed, MGK takes to singing the main lyrics for the chorus, as JUPITER becomes his echo, his response, their fingers appear to be echoing the lines marked on themselves onto his body.

> **_I think your fingers were made to unthread me / (I need to touch you ‘til I can’t feel a thing) / Grinding me down to my base components / (I’ll tear you apart, baby I’ll make you sing) / Don’t be gentle with me, I’ll be rebuilt / (Repaired cracks with gold, fit for a king) / I see the Sword of Damocles hanging above / (I wonder who will snap and sever the string)_ **

> _**I think your fingers were made to unthread me / (I need to touch you ‘til I can’t feel a thing) / Grinding me down to my base components / (I’ll tear you apart, baby I’ll make you sing)** _

> JUPITER reaches up to caress his cheek, and he leans in, leans over them braces himself with one hand by their head, the other on their hip, making sure to lean to the right, to keep from covering JUPITER’s face, his face in profile with their hand on his cheek as JUPITER takes over singing the call, while he goes back to being their response.

> _**I think your fingers were made to unthread me / (I need to touch you ‘til I can’t feel a thing) / Grinding me down to my base components / (I’ll tear you apart, baby I’ll make you sing)** _

> As the song dips into the coda, we see figures begin to surround the pair, and the table, all clad in black robes but with strange, undefinable boxes instead of heads. One from each side holds out an ornate knife, and both reach out in perfect symmetry to taken one. They alternate singing lines here, almost like it’s a conversation, eyes only for each other, both grinning and mischievous even as they harmonize on the final line.

> As they sing, MGK brings the knife up to stroke their cheek, dragging it down their throat, and then softly along the lines on their torso, while JUPITER slowly and carefully runs their own knife along his spine.

> _**It’s my one kept promise, baby, I will be the best you’ll ever have. / It’s my worst kept secret, honey, I really love it when you tear me apart. / Is it so bad to wanna hear you to say it out loud? / Don’t want the world to know, I’m far too proud.** _

> _**Can’t stop them asking questions so I guess it’s for the best; let’s just die young.** _

> The song crashes to a close with the final line and they bring their knives to each other’s throats, and finally the camera begins to move, angling itself down to reveal the heads of each of the robed figures around them is a teleivision, with this exact moment - JUPITER laying on their back, MGK sitting over them, both in their underwear, both grinning from ear to ear and holding a knife to each other’s throats - playing on each and every screen. It’s a perfect sunset, the wind is blowing gently, they’re by a cliff overlook an ocean and we can hear the sound of crashing waves. Every single one of the TV-heads is angled towards the pair on the stone alter, leaning in, like something’s about to happen, while they’re nose to nose in this standoff.

> Cut to black.

Since seeing it, I’ve thought about this video clip once per week. Both JUPITER and MGK have gone on to release more music videos, to work on more projects, and in case you hadn’t missed the news, they had also made their relationship public, but something about this video _fascinates_ me.

Twitter user jxpxtr96 summed up my feeling on the situation quite well: _I’ve never seen a couple with knives to each other’s necks where they were clearly just going to kill everyone else in the vicinity._

That night’s performance in something special, it’s like everyone was waiting for something to happen, like each song was leading up to _something._ As _The Shot That Killed Achilles_ is winding down, and JUPITER gestures for the crowd to quiet down, the anticipation pays off. 

“Tonight’s a special night, folks, we’re all here in New York, and I ran into a friend who agreed to help me with the last few songs of the show; what do you say? You wanna give him a warm welcome?” The audience are _hollering_ with excitement, and everyone on stage looks pleased by this reaction; with a nod to Olivier and Archer, _Anatomic_ begins it’s first live performance, and the crowd goes from excited to deafening as MGK joins JUPITER on stage. 

Together, they close out the show, singing _Anatomic, King of the Castle, Our Ancient Sins,_ and _bog mummy_ , with _Red String Song_ from their first album, and the 2016 single _Ghost Stories_ as encore performances. 

As the final song ends, and the crowd shows no signs of quieting down any time soon, MGK wraps JUPITER in a hug and spins them around, setting off another round of cheering from an audience who sees the act as a confirmation of sorts, even as the rest of the band leave their various instruments on stage to congratulate the pair of singers themselves.

TONIGHT, JUPITER will be invited to join EST FEST 2019. Tonight, JUPITER, Cerie, and Penny, will excuse themselves to video call the rest of their family, and I will later be informed that the call with Lola will leave JUPITER in tears, from the pride Lola expressed to them. Tonight is the night that JUPITER pinpoints to me, months later, where they felt the world finally started to see them for the artist they are, rather than simply their parents’ child.

Tonight there is definitely cause for celebration. 

( _Editor’s note: Since this article has been written, Anatomic has won Best Alternative Video and Best Art Direction at the MTV Video Music Awards, 2019._ )


End file.
